


An excess of footnotes

by gerometer



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Original Work, Political RPF - German 20th c.
Genre: 20th Century, Antisemitism, Atheism, Autistic Character, Books, Dysphoria, East Germany, Fanfiction of Fanfiction, Footnotes, Gen, Growing Up, LGBTQ Themes, Loneliness, Metafiction, Muggle Life, Name Changes, No beta we die like Cedric Diggory, Nonbinary Character, Period-Typical Racism, Queer History, Slow Build, So Very Slow, Trans Male Character, pronouns according to current self-image, this is an experiment, trans male character by trans male author
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:33:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 961
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27884551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gerometer/pseuds/gerometer
Summary: life is reading. And reading is processing references. And references are just footnotes lazily (or willfully) left out. It wouldn't thus be that far-fetched to say that life happens in the footnotes.or: growing up trans queer post dictatorship, and while all the adults are too busy falling on their feet or staging their life (play). Luckily, there is books and fanfiction to figure out this world.
Kudos: 1





	1. reading

**Author's Note:**

> This is experimental and not complete. It may stop at any point. I write this for myself, but I will be happy to read how it resonates with other's experiences. I am writing this to celebrate the Harry Potter fanfiction community.
> 
> warnings: East Germany, 90s: racism, antisemitism, ableism, anti-trans and anti-gay sexism. Also dysphoria. No graphic violence. Specific warnings before chapters.
> 
> To all the people helping me sort out stuff. It is especially dedicated to the Black and Jewish and trans and People of Color, to women and to those on the intersections. This may be both the journey and the result of tackling my own privileged shit.
> 
> Cheers and thanks to trans HP fandom! If you hurt us, we'll convert your children.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, footnotes in html suck. Wish for LaTeX...until then, footnotes appear in ().

Life is reading. And reading is processing references. And references are just footnotes lazily (or wilfully) left out. It wouldn't thus be that far-fetched to say that life happens in the footnotes.

And this is how we begin.(1) 

\---

Line is six and excited to be able to read. Books. Whole books. Line and Mutti go to the library, which is in a strange old building. What makes it strange is not the age, but there are different types of old. Like squeaking linoleum and smelly painted doors old and huge ancient magnificient looping wide staircases of dark wood that lead to the adult section of the library old. The kids section though is on the ground floor. When they return home there is now Die Kinder von Bullerbü(3) in their possession. Line slowly makes way through the chapters, taking in the drawings, empathizing with Lisa who often gets left out for being the youngest.(4) The coolest thing is the tree that grows between Lisa's and the next house. It is so big that you can probably climb from one window to the next. Line will forever be envious of people with tree houses and tree climbing, imagining sitting in a tree house surrounded by branches and twigs and leaves, reading.

\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1: Beginning not in a narrative sense: this is not how the story begins. Not in a temporal sense either: there will be points before and points after this point in both narrative and writing. And, let's face it, an excess of footnotes completely blows linear narrative and writing anyway. Which... may be the point. This is simply where we jump into this strange attractor of narrative dots.(2)
> 
> 2: strange attractor [phys./math.], something that endlessly seems to follow the same pattern like a stilograph but actually charts new territory in phase space with each iteration. The solar system may be one.  
> Yes, footnotes within footnotes.
> 
> 3: Astrid Lindgren, 1947
> 
> 4: like with Annika and Marian and these other two boys, much older than them, whose names Line always mixes up. They are mean and stupid anyway, like Marian. And Annika sometimes. She will play with Line as long as she can't go for something more interesting and grown up with the boys, and then they go and play their favorite game: running away and hiding. No rules save one: Line has to chase and find them. Line hates it. The adults are being adults. Line swears this will stop.


	2. Elsewhere

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes, elsewhere is where you live. Sometimes, it's a TV show. And sometimes it's in the mirror image between the bright room and the dark morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to handle the footnotes without html links. The chapters aren't that long anyway. So: number in () means footnote below.

Line is two, three. Mutti and Papa often have guests and talk about grown up stuff with people who come for a visit. Some of them are really old, one even had a walking cane. He was very friendly. To Line, he felt like a whole era had happened apart from their little family. Like he was Someone. (He was. But that Theo only learns later.) The guests speak in German, sometimes, but more often they speak and Line isn't sure what is different apart from not understanding.

\---

Line is two and Mutti and Papa are gone for two weeks. An elderly woman is baby sitting, and it's awful. Line is not allowed to do anything. Anything.  
Papa is away often. He is working in the Black Forest. To Line, this could just as well be where Hansel and Gretel got lost. It is as mythical as America. As the West.  
Line is alone.  
Kindergarten is uncomfortable and each morning is a nightmare for Line and Mutti. Or Papa. Line watches the reflection of the room in the window at seven on a winter morning, and wonders, what is real. Is it the room or Papa in his Wartburg(3) outside?  
Shortly after Line's second birthday, Mutti turns 26 and has a great birthday. There are so many people, and they are interesting, with fascinating colors on their clothing and haircuts and voices, and Line is sitting in the big armchair below the palm tree, imagining Elsewhere.

\---

Mutti is singing in a choir in a big church and Line has to be very quiet and the voices are incredible. Too loud but beautiful and too many. It is by this Bach guy and otherworldly to Line, but also quite the same all the time and Line wonders, why going to so much trouble when ten minutes of this are enough? Those ten minutes are really great, though, and afterwards Line convinces Mutti and Papa to leave. (They are not happy. Line doesn't understand. Even ice chocolate gets boring after three or four pieces.)

\---

One day, Line and Mutti and Papa go to an exhibition. That happens sometimes and Line is not always a fan. They are usually hard to understand and even harder to connect to anything relevant to Line. This one is somehow different. It is in the inside of an old church, except that the church doesn't have a roof. Or windows. Part of the wall is missing, too. Stones are lying around in heaps. They have to be careful where to step and there are photographs in black and white. The whole scenery seems to be black and white, too, as if they have stepped into the past. But in the photos all the churches and houses have roofs. It doesn't look like anywhere Line has been. Oma likes photographs like these, Line later finds out. They are in her flat and on calendars and books. When Line is in school, the letters are still hard to read. Oma keeps talking about how this is what their city looked like in the past. Line doesn't understand. There is no connection. At all.

\----

She is eleven and nameless, and a warrior witch princess of a secret kingdom in the woods who knows about plants(1) and has a bow and an arrow and who can shoot animals and skin them and butcher them and cook them, and they taste delicious. She has wild long curly dark brown hair, longer than Neiri and darker than hers, but she is as cool and knowledgeable as Neiri about wood and water stuff, even though they live near their boring province capital with neither interesting mountains or big dark forests or the sea nearby. And she is not friends with a humpback whale, but when they go to the Nemo pool she loves the spot with the small grotto and the aquaria under water, and she pretends to be Neiri and imitates her swimming although there also is no whale.(2)

The Ocean Girl series, they realize later, is definitely a really badass feminist series for kids. The girl knows all the important stuff, doesn't need saving (not usually, at least) and gets to show the guys her knowledge. She is also completely not interested in romance. And the other girls from the marine station are also cool and get a say, even if the boys try to make their decisions for them. #greatseriesforkids #dotheyevenshowthatkindofstuff #the90sweregreatfordiversekids'TV. Or so they think.  
\---

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1: not really -- she finds plants rather boring, but the idea of knowing about them appeals to her a lot, because that's what cool witches of the wood do}
> 
> 2: But that's not so much of a problem, she has all the facts about all the big sorts of whales memorized, length, whether they are toothed whales who eat fish or baleen whales who filter krill, and the shape of baleen She thinks her favorite is the blue whale, because 33 meters is really impressive and Antarctica must also be so beautiful. To be able to really see the iceberg shapes in the water and that bluish tint to it. She also knows a bit about dolphins, and that the Orca whale is actually a dolphin, but that in a broader sense dolphins are whales, too. The Orca is also very high on the list of favorite whales, with its beautiful black and white pattern and the elegant dorsal fin.
> 
> 3: The Wartburg was one of the two most common cars in GDR, not that cars were all that common, because you had to wait 15 years to get one. Or you had connections.

**Author's Note:**

> 1: Beginning not in a narrative sense: this is not how the story begins. Not in a temporal sense either. And, let's face it, an excess of footnotes completely blows linear narrative and writing anyway. Which... may be the point. This is simply where we jump into this strange attractor of narrative dots. \footnote{strange attractor [phys./math.], something that endlessly seems to follow the same pattern like a Spirograph but actually charts new territory in phase space with each iteration. The solar system may be one.}
> 
> 2: Astrid Lindgren, Alla vi barn i Bullerbyn (1947)
> 
> 3: like with Annika and Marian and these other two boys, much older than them, whose names Line always mixes up. They are mean and stupid anyway, like Marian. And Annika sometimes. She will play with Line as long as she can't go for something more interesting and grown up with the boys, and then they go and play their favorite game: running away and hiding -- without rules and Line searching. Line hates it. The adults are being adults. Line swears this will not happen anymore in four years.


End file.
